


Sasha

by sadlikeknives



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they meet she is Lieutenant Aleksandra Dmitrievna Tsvetaeva and he is Cadet Aleksandr Fedorovich Kaidanovsky, and she does not think it likely she will be partnered with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sasha

1\. When they meet she is Lieutenant Aleksandra Dmitrievna Tsvetaeva and he is Cadet Aleksandr Fedorovich Kaidanovsky, and she does not think it likely she will be partnered with him. They're working out the kinks in finding partners from among those who have all the right neurological markers to even be able to drift, but from what she can tell it requires having things in common, and what does she have in common with a giant of a teenage boy?

2\. At the Academy, they both turn out to be Sasha (so that's the first thing), and it's one of the Mexicans who insists they can't both have the same name, it's too confusing. She thinks the whole thing ridiculous, says of course they can, or they can call them by their last names or whatever, she really does not care. It's him, too big and uncomfortable with the attention it gains him, always trying to deflect, who offers 'Aleksis' as a desperate gambit to get the subject to change. Alyosha, he explains to her later, with a shrug, seems like it would be too foreign to their tongues, and he has a Latvian grandmother who used to call him that sometimes.

3\. She rolls her eyes and keeps calling him Sasha, and doesn't care who it confuses. Eventually, when they're in private, Sasha becomes Alyoshka, and she becomes Sashka, and neither of them thinks much of anything of it until they do, until they get new names together: Ranger.

4\. "Your name," someone asks Aleksis when he stumbles out of the conn-pod, seventeen hours plus after they entered it, and he has to think about it.

"Sasha," Sasha says helpfully, "he's Sasha," and she only realizes this is really not the answer they were looking for when people start yelling and rushing them to the infirmary. She only realizes she gave that answer for entirely the wrong reason about six hours after that.

Three days later, Aleksis bleaches his hair for the first time. "It looked wrong," is all he will say on the subject. It gets them grounded until they're both aware of their own personal traits again. He keeps the blond, and she keeps calling him Sasha. It takes a few annoying months, but they manage to convince a psychiatrist they know why they're doing it, and get their jaeger back.

5\. _Marry me_ , she thinks, ten miles off the coast from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, waiting, and he asks, "Are you asking?"

"I never was very traditional," she points out, thinking, _your name, I want your name, I want everyone to know who belongs to who_ , and he smiles and thinks, _yes_.

They marry in the registry office in Vladivostok, and then in the church, because, despite everything their world has become, Aleksis still has his faith, and while Sasha doesn't understand it, she respects it, and that this is something he wants. Neither ceremony is large--kaiju attacks are coming about every three months lately, and they've done the math and crossed their fingers, but those still aren't guarantees. The only guarantee is that they get two weeks off, after, and she gets his name. She took his first name the first time they met and now she's taken his surname, too, but that doesn't mean he's lost either one.

6\. She knows the paperwork she filed was correct, but someone screws up somewhere, unaware of Russian naming conventions and wanting to be helpful, assuming she made some kind of typo, maybe, and her English-language file winds up with her name listed as Kaidanovsky instead of Kaidanovskaya. She and Aleksis shrug and go on. It's not worth fighting over, she doesn't mind answering to it.

7\. In Vladivostok, Aleksis is sort of his 'English' name. Everyone speaking Russian calls him Alyosha, like the silly idea that they need different names somehow emigrated across language lines while they weren't paying attention. And then Vladivostok is closing, and they watch Cherno being loaded onto a Jaeger transport for the trip down to Hong Kong and she says thoughtfully, "You'll be Aleksis soon."

"Until this is over," he agrees. They don't know what the plan is yet, but they're not stupid. Pentecost didn't need a nuclear warhead for a barbecue.

She puts one arm around his waist, looks up at him, and teases, "Maybe then you can go back to being Sasha."

He smiles down at her, reminds her, "I'm always your Sasha."

Always, she thinks, and asks, "Looking forward to seeing your partners in crime again?"

She means the Wei Tangs, but the Academy was a long time ago, and he just puts his arm around her shoulders and says, "Ah, Sashenka, you're the only partner in crime I need."

8\. His name is the last thing she thinks. Or maybe her name is the last thing he thinks. It’s not like it really matters who is who, as long as they are together.


End file.
